He sounded a bit nervous. But then, if you were being handed, at the same time, the biggest paycheck of your career and the second-worst team in pro football, wouldn't you be nervous, too?"Just tell me one thing," I asked Steve Mariucci, the Lions' new head coach, Wednesday afternoon, "tell me you can win more than three games next year.""Ah, ah . . ." he said, stalling, "we'll go one game at a time.""No," I insisted. "Please. Just say you can win three games. Just say it. You can, right?""Ah, ah," he laughed. "Don't put words in my mouth."
Put on the coffee. Pull open the shades. The Detroit Lions, awakening from a decades-long slumber, are today, officially, entering the 21st Century.They are, for the first time, hiring a coach that other teams actually covet. They are, for the first time, paying the kind of money the top teams pay and the top coaches get. They are, for the first time, jumping feet first into the sandbox with the other top NFL teams, looking to a proven, young winner to guide them -- instead of some who-dat face they got on the cheap.
SAN DIEGO -- This is what I saw sitting across from me: Don King, the boxing promoter, with his frizzled gray hair and shaded glasses, grinning and yelling and mopping his brow with a napkin. He was mouthing on and on about his latest boxing promotion -- "Call your local cable operators! Call your local pay-per-view!" -- working himself into a real lather.
If you have a problem with Keyshawn Johnson, you have a problem with yourself.-- Keyshawn JohnsonSAN DIEGO -- Well, there you go. That answers it. All this time I've been wondering what the problem is, and now I know. It's me. I have a problem with myself. Oh, Keyshawn, if only you had told me sooner. The therapy I could have saved!Johnson uttered this mother of all statements just a few days ago, here at Super Bowl XXXVII. It was so priceless, so amazingly brazen, that at first I thought he was misquoted.Then, the next day, he said it again.
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
